In A New Heartland, Janet Galligani Casey tackles the difficult issue of how to judge modernity in early twentieth-century America by focusing on a group often thought to embody traditional and anti modern America, its rural women. The book is not about the realities of rural life. Instead, it is about the depiction and idea of rural life, and women's place within these. Galligani Casey examines women's place in the periodicals, literature, and photography of the time, doing a particularly good job of analyzing the leading farm women's periodical of the day, The Farmer's Wife. The book connects agrarian women with early twentieth-century debates about women's place in ways not normally seen in either mainline women's history, or even rural women's history.